When It's Okay To Be Totally Honest With Your Client

Even the best client has their difficult moments. You've days, weeks, or even months developing a working relationship. Sooner or later, you would think they would learn that you know what you're talking about! There are some scenarios when it's okay to be totally honest with your client, right? They're paying you to guide them. Doesn't that make it your job to take care of them? Unfortunately, in many cases, your client just isn't ready for that honesty.

You're working with a client who has been with your business for a long time.

You think the two of you have a great working relationship. When you approach this client, you think that you have the freedom to treat them like you would a coworker, sharing your candid opinion instead of tempering it with professional courtesy. Don't! No matter how good your relationship is with the client, you're better off keeping it professional--even if that means tempering your opinion until it's barely recognizable.

Your client has just put a proposal on your desk that's so ludicrous, you're sure it must be a joke.

Surely no one could be serious about this particular proposal...could they? Unfortunately, as much as you'd like to be completely honest with your client, it's probably not a good idea. The fact that they've presented it to you at all means that they think their proposal has merit. Instead, you're going to have to find a polite way to explain why it won't work--or even worse, come up with enough usable pieces of it to make your counter proposal sound something like their initial document.

Something has gone insanely wrong on your end.

The kind of insane that if it happened in a movie, it would be stretching credulity to maintain your suspension of disbelief. Surely the client will understand why you're so far behind when you explain just how wrong things have gone! Here's the problem: your client doesn't want to know about the insanity happening on your end of the job. They just want to know how they're going to be affected and how soon you can have everything straightened out again.

They've messed the project up completely.

You went into this together. You thought that you were a team. There's just one problem: your client completely failed to uphold their end of the bargain. You want nothing more than to drop full responsibility for the entire mess on their shoulders. Unfortunately, you want to keep the client more than you want them to take the blame for the current mess-up--so you're going to have to find a way to shoulder part of the responsibility and smooth things out again.

SEE ALSO: HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY OUTSOURCE WORK

Their existing system is such a failure that you're going to have to start from scratch.

Many times, consultants come in because a company is incapable of finding its own way to success. You might even feel that it's your job to come in and explain all the reasons why their existing system is completely and utterly wrong. If you do that, however, you're going to find that you've just made the rest of your job a lot more difficult. Start by finding common ground. Look for the things that the company is doing well. You might not be able to fix everything wrong with their current system--and that's all right. It's worth being polite to maintain your relationship with the client.

Total honesty often feels as though it would make your life much easier. If you could just get the client to see it from your perspective, you might be able to get things sorted out! If only it were that easy. Most of the time, your job isn't to be totally honest with the client. It's to take care of them--and that often means telling them what they want to hear instead of the no holds barred truth.